Beth Ann Pettyjohn, the co-owner and vice president of Overhead Door Co. of Denver, has pled guilty to failing to pay over $4.7 million in employment taxes, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver announced Wednesday.

According to investigators, Pettyjohn, 60, of Englewood, stopped paying over payroll taxes (income taxes withheld and FICA) that Overhead Door Co., withheld from employees’ wages as well as the matching portion of FICA totaling about $4.7 million from the IRS.

Investigators said she stopped the payments between September 2003 and June 2009 .

Pettyjohn allegedly admitted that she knew she had a duty to pay the amounts withheld from employees wages, but told an IRS agent she failed to do so “because the IRS was not beating down her door,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Pettyjohn managed the accounting department at Overhead Door and determined which bills were paid, and then issued and signed the related checks.

Pettyjohn has a bachelor’s degree in business with a major in accounting, and she had an inactive CPA license issued by the state of Colorado.

During the years she did not pay, she employed both hourly and salaried employees.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said that during the period in question and for many prior years, Pettyjohn and her husband lived in a home valued at more than $1 million. Between 2005 through 2007, Pettyjohn received wages from Overhead Door averaging $133,000 a year.

Prosecutors said that after Pettyjohn stopped paying the payroll taxes, she purchased pieces of real estate.

In August 2007, Mr. and Mrs. Pettyjohn purchased a condominium in Gypsum for $349,900 with a $100,000 down payment.

In 2009, Pettyjohn paid $285,000 in cash to purchase her son’s condominium in suburban Denver.

The condo was resold to an unrelated party a few months later.

Pettyjohn pleaded guilty to one count of failure to pay over tax. She faces not more than five years in federal prison and a fine up to $250,000 when sentenced by U.S. District Judge William J. Martinez on Sept. 10 .

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